Jason Stamper's Blog: April 2009 Archives

Oracle staff visit Sun HQ: first pics
April 28, 2009

After lunch there was just time for Sun's execs to give Oracle staff and family a tour of the HQ.

Thanks to Tembako on Flickr for the pic (CC licence).

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Posted by Jason Stamper on 12:34 PM | Comments (0)

Sun staff visit Oracle HQ: first pictures

Sun's staff weren't sure what exactly was meant by Oracle's choice of canapés, but they sure as hell didn't like it.

Thanks to Tres.Jolie for the pic (Flickr, CC licence).

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Posted by Jason Stamper on 12:08 PM | Comments (0)

Minidisc community gets tough

After months of planning, the Minidisc Community was finally ready to take matters into its own hands.

More Minidisc silliness here.

Thanks to Loop Oh on Flickr for the pic (CC licence).

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Posted by Jason Stamper on 11:36 AM | Comments (0)

Jason's blog nominated in Best Geek Blog awards

If you have enjoyed reading my ramblings over the years do me a favour and vote for my blog, which I've just put forward in the Best Geek Blog category, in the Blogger's Choice Awards.

No, I hadn't heard of them either, but apparently they have some currency out in the Weird Wide Web. Or so they claim, and who am I to question such a claim?

Don't forget this blog has recently brought you a Q&A with the Father of Java James Gosling; a look at the 10 Most Recession Proof IT Sectors; Steve Jobs' weight loss nightmare; Mini disc community up in mini arms and most recently Don't panic about swine flu.

So click the button below and cast your vote if you have found some value in what you have read here. Thanks!

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Posted by Jason Stamper on 11:00 AM | Comments (0)

The Sky is Falling: the 1976 US swine flu scare
April 27, 2009

This is interesting: a swine flu epidemic in 1976 saw the US government rush to immunise as many people as it could in the entire United States. The outbreak never happened as predicted, and the mass immunisation is generally thought not to have been necessary, though it did give rise to some useful side-benefits. More here.

Also read why swine flu no more dangerous than other flu here.

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Posted by Jason Stamper on 01:13 PM | Comments (0)

Don’t panic: swine flu is no more dangerous than ‘normal’ flu

While Swine Flu is the biggest trending topic on Twitter this morning, and many commentators are predicting untold carnage, it’s worth noting that the symptoms and transmission of the swine flu from human to human is much like seasonal flu: commonly fever, lethargy, lack of appetite and coughing.

Some people with swine flu have also reported runny nose, sore throat, nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea. That’s according to the US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Of course in the very young or very frail, these symptoms can be enough to make an individual extremely ill, or even be fatal. This latest variant of the virus is also thought to have killed some otherwise healthy adults. But fatalities are still thought to be rare as a percentage of all infections.

So how come there have been up to 152 deaths in Mexico already, and none in the rest of the world? According to a WHO expert interviewed on The Today programme on Radio 4 this morning, it's highly likely that although still a scary number, 152 is a very small percentage of the number of people actually infected with the virus in Mexico. "There could be 10,000, 15,000 infections," he said, "making the number of deaths a relatively small percentage, though of course we should still be very concerned at any deaths, regardless of the numbers."

He said the numbers of deaths are also skewed by the fact that only those infected persons in hospital -- i.e. those who are very ill already -- tend to be counted towards the number of known cases. The far larger body of cases, where people develop far less severe symptoms, is much harder to track in the early stages of the infection's progression.

The spokesperson said that the reason there have not yet been any deaths outside of Mexico -- where the infection began -- is probably because not enough people have contracted the virus, so the law of averages, and the fact that the NHS is able to focus its resources on a small number of people, means that there have not yet been any fatalities outside Mexico's borders.

That’s partly because for most adults, swine flu responds well to drugs including amantadine, rimantadine, oseltamivir and zanamivir. So as long as it is identified fairly quickly, and the right course of treatment is available, the prognosis is actually good.

So while any deaths are tragic, as President Obama said, so far there is "cause for concern but not alarm". It remains highly unlikely that even those catching the virus would become very seriously ill.

Don't take my word for it -- read the Guardian's excellent piece here.

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Posted by Jason Stamper on 12:45 PM | Comments (0)

Software AG says Oracle-Sun is bad for consumers
April 24, 2009

“Today’s customers are looking for solutions which provide a high level of interoperability, simplicity, ease-of-use and a fast ROI. Corporate mergers, such as Oracle-Sun, make this virtually impossible," said Dr. Peter Kürpick, Chief Product Officer and member of the Executive Board, Software AG.

"Customers are being forced to mix and match complex, patched together solutions. And they find this a little scary”, he said.

“At Software AG we focus on Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), business process management (BPM) and integration and not try to be all things to all people. It makes us one of few horizontal integration solutions in an age where vertically integrated giants are attempting to dominate customers and markets," he said. I'm not sure about the use of the phrase 'attempting to' in this context.

"Our 40-year history of independence and success, and our protection from a hostile takeover, ensures our customers have a reliable platform for driving future business results – faster,” Dr. Kürpick added.

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Posted by Jason Stamper on 04:16 PM | Comments (0)

Is Labour better at Web 2.0 than we thought?
April 22, 2009

While I have expressed some concern that Labour is not doing as much with Web 2.0 social networking tools as it could, a new poll conducted on Twitter itself has found that they're not doing too badly as far as Twitterers are concerned.

A TweetMinster poll of almost 1,000 users of the service found that Labour was the most popular party, followed by the Liberal Democrats with 27% of the vote and Conservative with 20%. Click here for more.

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Posted by Jason Stamper on 05:26 PM | Comments (0)

Did Oracle acquire Sun to stop Microsoft buying it?
April 20, 2009

So after all the rumours, it is Oracle that has picked up Sun Microsystems, for $5.6bn net of cash.

While the speculation surrounding IBM's rumoured acquisition of Sun tended to assume that there were no other sensible acquisition candidates, I have tended to disagree. It occurred to me that a great acquirer would have been Microsoft.

Yes, I said Microsoft. I know you're thinking that Microsoft is a software firm, and has been a fierce Sun rival for many years, but just think about it for a moment. Oracle has been both of those things too.

Microsoft is building out its Azure cloud computing platform as we speak, and has said it needs to build around 40 new data centres round the world to give it the necessary capacity. Sun could save it billions of dollars in that goal alone. Microsoft's .Net software is fine but not quite a match for Sun's Java, nor does it run on the over 10 million devices that Java does.

Microsoft is running out of headroom remaining a software company that does little to embrace the open source model -- Sun has a very strong story in open source and could have radically transformed Microsoft's business into one that adopts a new openness about its software, uses Sun's amazing distribution channels thanks to things like the downloads of Java and MySQL, and create a really compelling stack that went from cloud computing, to open source software, to the desktop.

Sure, Oracle will be able to make all sorts of hay thanks to this acquisition. But I believe Microsoft could have done even more. Oracle expects to be able to add $1.5- to $2bn profit to its bottom line by adding Sun to its mix. But what effect on its database business will MySQL hold in store? And didn't Larry Ellison once say that there was no point buying things like JBoss because he could just take the code and offer it to users wihtout stumping up the acquisition price?

I don't know, it's just a theory. But given Ellison's record, it would not surprise me one iota if the SEC filings which are expected to detail the ins and outs of the Sun sell-off suggest that at least one other massive software powerhouse showed an interest.

Whether or not there's any substance in this thinking, it is surely going to be fascinating to watch what Oracle does with Sun, how seriously it takes its new hardware business, and how it grapples with the acquisition of a vast open source business that doesn't exactly sit easily with its own vast commercial software operation.

But what do you think? Drop me a comment.

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Posted by Jason Stamper on 04:30 PM | Comments (0)

Q&A: James Gosling on Sun-IBM, cloud, SOA, and of course Java
April 15, 2009

Please follow me on Twitter: www.twitter.com/jasonstamper

James Gosling, VP and Sun Microsystems Fellow, is better known as the Father of Java – he did the original design of the Java programming language and implemented its original compiler and virtual machine. I caught up with him in a month in which it was first rumoured that IBM was about to buy Sun, and then that the deal was off. [Shortly after, and after I had interviewed Gosling, it was announced that Oracle is buying Sun, for around $5.6bn net of cash.]

Q. I know you won’t be able to say much about the rumours in the press. But if some kind of IBM-Sun deal did happen, would it be interesting to see what you could do combining things like Sun’s NetBeans and IBM’s Eclipse projects?

A. It’s certainly possible. We have been partners on the Java journey for quite a few years. In many ways there would not be a huge impact on Java development. It’s all just speculation at this point.

Q. IBM and Sun seem to be rather different organisations…

A. There would definitely be a culture clash. We’re definitely weirder than they are. We grew up from a bunch of hippies, almost with flowers in our hair. But we’re a much more grown-up company now [than when Sun was founded] with a very different group of people. We’ve become a full-on enterprise software company.

Q. You’re in London addressing developers and partners; what are some of the key themes you have been discussing?

[click continue reading for more on this entry]...

Continue reading "Q&A: James Gosling on Sun-IBM, cloud, SOA, and of course Java"

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Posted by Jason Stamper on 12:47 PM | Comments (2)

Is Twitter as reliable as the Dead Parrot in Monty Python?
April 08, 2009

Having just blogged that both Twitter and Facebook need some serious scalability enhancements, I log on to Twitter to do some tweeting only to get this message:

Are they just playing at this stuff, or what?

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Posted by Jason Stamper on 04:24 PM | Comments (1)

If Facebook and Twitter are serious, they need to act like it
April 07, 2009

Not a day goes by without a pundit or analyst predicting that social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter are important new collaboration technologies – not just for people to keep in touch with friends on an occasional basis, but also as serious marketing, communication and collaboration tools that might hold some value for corporations as well as consumers.

One day they may be just that, but they’re far from it today.

While trying to use Twitter this morning I was faced with this message saying the site is overloaded – and not for the first time I might add.

Then this afternoon Facebook ground to a halt too, because my account – yes my account, not just Facebook generally – is undergoing “site maintenance”.

Don’t these kinds of outages burst the bubble of anyone espousing the benefits of these sites as serious business tools? Enterprise collaboration tools need to be not just pervasive and intuitive – which Facebook and to a lesser extent Twitter probably are – they need to be scalable and reliable.

Time to grow up, methinks.

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Posted by Jason Stamper on 05:47 PM | Comments (2)

Salesforce.com’s Benioff says ‘get off of my cloud’

Isn’t it a little ironic that Marc Benioff, CEO of salesforce.com, left the stage after his keynote at his firm’s Cloudforce event today to the sound of the Rolling Stones’ Get off of my Cloud?

This is a company that until very recently was firmly a Software as a Service (SaaS) firm. Now the sentiment is that companies are muscling in on its ‘heritage’ in cloud computing. Talk about the emperor’s new clothes.

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Posted by Jason Stamper on 03:54 PM | Comments (1)